Faith Works 1-27-18

Faith Works 1-27-18

Jeff Gill

 

Seminaries, bookshops, and the Hallmark Channel

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We all know, I trust, that the Hallmark Channel is marketing fantasy and lovely imaginary scenarios.

 

Right?

 

This past Christmas season, many new viewers chose to turn to the Hallmark Channel for their reliably upbeat, happy-in-the-end, stories of romance and love conquering all. Including economic realities.

 

Among their regular tropes of secret Santas and well timed snowfall and perfect outdoor décor, in their dozens of annual new releases they also frequently save a charming small business. Yes, Christmas themed shops, diners, and independent quaint little bookstores.

 

No one has done more for independent book shops than the Hallmark Channel. I lost count how many of them they saved from bankruptcy and closure this past year. In fantasyland, that is.

 

Kicks Mix Bookstore in Newark and Readers' Garden in Granville are among the 10,000 plus independent book shops around the country; with the closure and consolidation of some of the big chains like Waldenbooks and Borders, that number may well be going back up. We have twice as many bookstores today in the United States as we did when World War II ended, but certainly fewer than a couple of decades ago. Barnes & Noble, plus our new neighbors at Amazon, have shaken up the landscape of bookselling.

 

Any bookstore owner or employee can tell you (and yes, I was once one myself, more than once in fact) that it takes hard work to keep such a retail outlet going, and even then there are no guarantees. Unless you own a struggling bookshop in a Hallmark movie!

 

I'm bringing all this up because I have a strong interest in the fate and future of seminary education. I'm an ordained minister in my tradition, which in the last 75 years has meant I earned a bachelor's degree and then went on to get a Master of Divinity or M.Div. It was residential, meaning I went somewhere, lived (part of those years) in student housing, and in my case it was 90 credit hours and a thesis defense at the end. Ordination is the work of the church, but the M.Div. degree is the work of the seminary.

 

And seminaries are closing. Fast. Overall, residential seminary enrollment has dropped by a quarter to a third over the last decade, while online programs have doubled. Distance learning is rapidly being adapted into ministerial formation programs, but the pressure on what were often already financially stressed institutions for graduate education has become immense.

 

A few years ago, some liberal seminaries in New York and Boston and Chicago began to show the strain, or announce outright closure timetables, and there was much ideological finger-pointing . . . but in the last year, conservative bastions like Moody Bible Institute and Fuller Theological Seminary have closed extension campuses and slashed staff at their main institutions. Seminary education, as we've known it, is shaking from the very roots.

 

My own seminary sent out fundraising materials that included the, to me, shocking news that they are reliant on endowment funds for 56% of their operating costs, and another 20% from grants. Is that sustainable? We'll see. Other seminaries I've been used to working with through my church, and supporting students, have sold their campuses and gone "virtual" or are facing recognition or even accreditation pressures. Most of them won't even share their endowment fund draw information, which makes me think . . .

 

Because, and I know this will sadden some of you, life is not a Hallmark Channel movie. But working with religious organizations over the years, I worry that we have too much hope, too many expectations that are not really based in faith but more in wishful thinking, that some white knight will ride in, some "bequest will mature," that dollars will rain down miraculously and save the bookstore.

 

Or seminary.

 

In fact, that's rarely how God works, even less so for bricks and mortar. So I worry about seminaries and how we look at seminary education and how we as churches do ministerial formation. I want my own denomination to refocus on formation, spiritual and professional, but my time and energy keeps getting taken up with institutional survival and structural salvage.

 

But that's why I am oddly so inspired by what Trinity Episcopal Church is doing in the heart of Newark. Their building, they came to realize, could not be saved: but the church could be. And it's through the church that God saves people, not through buildings (or institutions). Images of Christ are nice, meeting Jesus in the life of faith is central.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he still enjoys a good Hallmark movie from time to time, just as a break from it all. Tell him what you see changing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.